Canberra Australia Parliament Buildings

A Crown Building Sitting on Top of a Sacred Hill

The site for the Parliament buildings is a very prominent hill overlooking the city of Canberra. The site was considered almost as a sacred site because of the Masterplan for the city by Walter Burley Griffen architect. No one in Australia wanted anything to be built on the hill so our approach was to treat the main building as a crown sitting on top of the hill.

We raised the entire building three floors off the ground and made it circular. Future expansion would be restricted to radiating buildings constructed into the hillside with the rooftops heavily planted so the visual impression was that the hill was intact. The parking was located behind the radiating hillside buildings. At night the building would glow like a jeweled crown.